Printing, in the only sense with which we are at present concerned, differs from most if not from all the arts and crafts represented in the Exhibition
in being comparatively modern.
For although the Chinese took impressions from wood blocks engraved in relief for centuries before the woodcutters of the Netherlands, by a similar process
produced the block books, which were the immediate predecessors of the true printed book,
the invention of movable metal letters in the middle of the fifteenth century may justly be considered as the invention of the art of printing.